- Reuters

DENIA, Spain (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in a seaside hotel in southeast Spain on Sunday, slightly injuring a tourist, after a warning call in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, officials said.

The bomb, the second claimed by ETA in two weeks, was hidden in a backpack and left in a courtyard in the hotel in Denia, near the resorts of Benidorm and Alicante, the Interior Ministry said.

About 160 people, including several British tourists, were evacuated before the explosion, but one guest’s eardrums were damaged by the blast, a ministry source said.

The blast, which ripped a hole 10 meters by 5 meters (33 ft by 16 ft) in an outside wall and shattered windows, followed a warning call to the Basque roadside assistance authority in the name of ETA, a spokesman there said.

“There’s a device in Hotel Port Denia, in Denia. In 40 minutes it will explode,” the spokesman quoted a woman as saying. “Long live ETA,” she added in Basque.

ETA, or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, has been around since 1958 and started it’s terrorist activities in 1959. The primary goal of much of ETA’s actions are political influence and gain. No one has died from an ETA attack since 2003, however that does mean they are less of a threat.

If you recall, in the hours following 3/11 in Madrid, several analysts and government officials in Spain orginally blamed the Madrid Train Bombings on ETA. France even scrambled authorities to various train stations and railroad tracks to make sure nothing was comprimised by ETA. It of course was later learned the train bombings were the work of Al Qaida.

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